transcendence
by kwizten
Summary: Non-massacre. Sakura has learned quite a bit about her new bodyguard lately. For example: he doesn't appreciate her cooking, he is terrible at conversation, and he is also falling in love with her. Too bad she doesn't know who he is under that ANBU mask. ItaSaku and others.
1. one

**transcendence **| by kwizten | _ONE_

* * *

**HER.**

She wonders if having a bodyguard is an invasion of her privacy.

He is by no means rude or prying. He does not leer at her, or make uncomfortable comments about her or her friends or her work. He does not go through her things, or stand too close, or turn away anyone who approaches her, or ask questions she does not want to answer. In fact, he is the exact opposite of all these things: he is not present at all.

She has never met her bodyguard before, not really, unless she counts that time two weeks ago when Tsunade convinced her she was in danger in the first place. She remembers grumbling about being able to take care of herself, remembers a kunai flying at her face out of absolutely nowhere, remembers a lithe, uniformed body standing in front of her to block the assault.

"Tsunade-sama," he says, "perhaps it is not wise to attack your own student just to prove a point."

The ANBU officer was and still is like a whisper – so fleeting and soft that she barely even noticed he was there. And even now he hardly exists, the only sign of him lingering within the goosebumps on her skin, because she knows he is there and he is watching and he is invisible.

She wonders if he sleeps while she sleeps, or if that is when he is most awake. She wonders when he has time to eat, if she should leave him a takeout tin the next time her cooking is too unappetizing even for her. She wonders if he has a family who worries about him, thinking he is off in a far land, preparing to be killed in action if he must, while really he is right under their noses, down the street, ghosting around her apartment like a sigh.

But this is about all she wonders. She does not want to know her bodyguard outside of her own curiosities because that would mean she would have to be invested in another person, have to get to know someone who was born and grew up and had a life and a career and a future and who lives a life so similar but so distant from her own. She prefers him to be a shadow because she prefers to pretend as though she is not being watched, is not always entertaining company, is not in any sort of danger. She appreciates his help but does not appreciate his being there. She simply does not have room in her heart for the companionship of a stranger.

So she sits in the darkness and empties him from her mind and lets herself drift away. But she knows that no matter how far she falls into herself, shuts her eyes and escapes the reality of her world, he will still – always – be watching.

* * *

**HIM.**

Of all the ANBU officers in all the squadrons in all the world, he doesn't know why it has to be him.

He doesn't mind, of course, because orders are orders, and working so close to home is a welcome change, even though he is a bit too preoccupied for family dinners and clan meetings and anything homely at all. But he finds it strange that this duty has been given to a captain of high caliber instead of a freshly initiated rookie. After all, Haruno Sakura hardly appears to need protection.

She spends her days at home, mostly. She doesn't often have guests, nor does she visit anyone else. She trains occasionally but does not seem to enjoy the outdoors, which he finds strange considering she is a kunoichi, groomed for traveling and a mission roster – or perhaps she just knows she is in danger and going outside is too risky. She does not cook or draw or go to work at the hospital or do much of anything at all on a regular basis – instead her interests are a kaleidoscope.

On Monday she spends the entirety of her day trying different hairstyles. She sits on the floor in front of a long mirror and sweeps her hair up and down and sideways and through plaits and senbon and ribbons and hats and although he is watching her closely and has hair even longer than hers, he is sure he will never be able to understand quite how she does it.

On Tuesday she wakes up at the crack of dawn and studies. From his hidden post outside her window, he catches glimpses of foreign characters and strange markings – she is teaching herself a new language he doesn't recognize, a language that hops and extends like a ballet, and by the time she goes to bed she has written pages and pages of practice squiggles and detailed notes complete with subpar doodles to help her remember what she's read.

On Wednesday she has forgotten her willingness to learn, and instead decides her apartment is too filthy to survive in, even though his first thought when he started this mission two weeks ago was that she is pleasantly tidy. She scrubs the place down from top to bottom, even steps outside for a moment to rinse out the gutters and sand the roof tiles. He finds her handiness with tools an odd fit with her delicate physique and petal hair. It is still early when she falls asleep on the couch, takeout still in her lap and threatening to dirty the cushions she has spent all day washing.

Today is Thursday and it is a day of relaxation and music. The radio is on and has played a different station every hour: first classical piano, then dance, then angry screaming, showtunes, a brief intermission of talk radio with a program about unusual pets in Kumo, and now she is singing along to slow jazz, crooning softly in a way that is not particularly impressive, but that has a sense of rawness that, at first, shakes him.

He sits on her open windowsill, genjutsu carefully in place as he watches soundlessly and pretends he doesn't exist. He observes this girl he has spent a decade knowing only in passing, this girl on Sasuke's team and under Tsunade's wing, and while he has never cared to know her before, he finds himself quite curious now, and for reasons he can only sort of grasp.

He thinks it is because she makes no sense.

He has heard stories about her, is aware of her reputation and skill and finesse. They have many mutual friends and acquaintances, although they travel in different social and professional circles, and from what he has heard of her personality, she has a sharp tongue and a brutal fist and a gentle smile. But despite all that he knows about Haruno Sakura, he has seen next to none of it during his time as her guard.

Instead she is boring, odd, antisocial. On Monday she does her hair but does not seem to like it any way other than loose against her shoulder blades. On Tuesday she studies but has no passion or fire in her eyes, no thirst in her movements. On Wednesday she bruises her knees and blisters her hands but never steps back and looks at her progress, at the glimmering floorboards and spotless windows.

She has done every task, spent every day, completely and totally indifferent. And this unsettles him.

She is nothing like he expected. She is nothing like Sasuke has implied or Tsunade has praised or countless citizens have loved. He wonders if she is just bored, cooped up at home with danger supposedly lurking around the corner – but he has yet to notice any threat, anyone out to get her, any passerby with bad intentions. He does not know why Tsunade orders her protection, when he sees nothing spectacular about this girl besides her hair color and strange habits.

But as she croons, lying on her back on the hardwood floor of her bare, clean living room, the darkness beginning to envelope her pale form like a wave, he feels a part of him begin to understand. There is something about her lilting tone as she arches and stretches her arms above her head like a cat, and somehow she is suddenly strong but feminine, brusque but gentle, fragile but pretending otherwise. The song's lyrics are obscure and perhaps irrelevant to her entirely, does not work as a song otherwise would, does not give him a glimpse into her inner thoughts or emotional state, but it is the way she sings that convinces him to look underneath the underneath.

He now knows why Tsunade has sent him here, knows just why Haruno Sakura needs protecting.

And just like that, his genjutsu breaks.

* * *

**A/N: **I never meant to start something new, it just sort of happened. Oops. I'm still working on my other shit, I promise, but I'm 24 years old and adulthood is hard! The chapters in this story are about 3% of my usual length though, so expect these updates to be more frequent than the others since I am less intimidated by myself. Enjoy~

Check out my **TWITTER** and **TUMBLR** and **INSTAGRAM**. Links on my profile.


	2. two

**transcendence **| by kwizten | _TWO_

* * *

**HER.**

It takes a good thirty seconds before she notices him.

His genjutsu may be gone, but he is still concealing his presence. She knows by now that if she looks for him, really stretches out her chakra enough, she can feel a little prickle on the edges, a little extra static that proves she isn't quite alone. But it has been two weeks and she doesn't try to find him anymore; she doesn't want him on her radar much at all if she can help it.

So when she stretches again with the sigh of a saxophone, when she tilts her head back and sees his upside-down silhouette, half covered in the shadow of dusk, she realizes he isn't as invisible as he's meant to be. She lets the song drift away from her lips like a caress, lets the woman on the radio finish the song in a solo. Her eyes take their time refocusing on his porcelain mask, the litheness of his form, the tattoo on his bicep and the dark ponytail tucked away at his neck, and almost immediately she is annoyed by his presence of perfection.

"You aren't supposed to be here," she says flatly, suddenly feeling weary just by looking at him.

He either doesn't feel her discomfort, or he simply doesn't care. In any case, he corrects her as though he hasn't done anything wrong, hasn't overstepped his boundaries by coming out to play. "…I am your personal guard."

"Yet here you are, acting like a therapist," she snaps. He isn't supposed to be talking to her, and she isn't supposed to recall what he looks like, the square of his shoulders. He is supposed to be even less than a shadow, and above all, he is supposed to be mute.

She finds it offensive that Tsunade has put him up to this in the first place, has made him watch her every single hour of every single day while she has been doing just fine by herself. She is even more offended that he feels the need to stamp his presence on her mind and coax her into _talking_. She does not need to talk. She does not want to talk. The whole point of being here alone and hiding away from all things threatening is so she doesn't have to. Although it's possible he isn't quite aware of that.

She cannot read his expression because of the tanuki mask he wears, but she finds she cannot read his body language either, not while she is upside down. She groans and sits upright, already missing the coolness of the hardwood floors and the way the music calms her.

"I'm sorry," she mutters half-heartedly, too frustrated to even look at him, but just ashamed enough to say so. "I'm not much of a conversationalist. You understand."

He probably does, she thinks. After all, he is ANBU, and ANBU have about as many social skills as the month-old natto in her fridge.

He doesn't say or do anything to give any indication that he's heard her. He is just like a therapist after all – lurking behind her and watching watching _watching_ until she snaps and releases a whirlwind and tells him everything she is feeling and going through and and and…

"I'm going to take a bath," she murmurs instead. Anything to escape him and his very real, very tangible self. Although as far as she knows, he's been watching her bathe for the past two weeks already…but surely he isn't going to try sneaking a peek now that his genjutsu is out of place. Tsunade wouldn't have hired anyone less than a gentleman to lurk in her apartment for an undetermined amount of time, after all.

Without waiting for a response because she does not – _does not_ – want to call this interaction a _conversation_, she hurries off into the next room, shuts the door behind her, and yanks the knobs above her bathtub as briskly as possible so he hears the waterfall rush and knows she is done acknowledging him. With deep breaths, she calms herself, pretends like his sudden reveal has never happened and that he is as invisible and nonexistent as ever. It is easier to imagine this, now that he is on the other side of the wall and out of sight, out of mind.

Eventually the tub fills and she turns off the water. Sheathing her naked form in the clear, bubble-free liquid, she curls into a ball and wraps her arms around herself. A woman with a husky voice drifts through the thin plastered walls, a different woman than before, and Sakura is glad that she has forgotten to turn off the radio in her hasty escape from the living room. The voice washes over her more so than the bathwater, distracts her to the point of feeling drugged. It is as though her worries are dripping away and off her skin and into the pool around her, and everything is disappearing into the shuffled percussion, however muffled it may be. She quickly lets herself forget everything that disturbs her: her near-hikikomori lifestyle, the absence of her friends and teammates, the mysterious tanuki-man in her house and the painful, painful memories of why he is here to protect her at all—

With a sudden click, the radio is off. The woman is gone, the solace shattered, her comfort zone extinguished. The memories come rushing back and she is once again trapped in her cold reality.

And with a shiver of dread, she realizes her strange ANBU bodyguard does not make her feel safe at all – instead he is ruining everything.

* * *

**HIM.**

By the time she comes out of the bathroom, he has picked up some groceries and stocked them in her otherwise bare kitchen. He is embarrassed at the state of her kitchen simply because she is not. Although she'd spent all of yesterday cleaning the entire apartment, and although the countertops are now clean and the fridge shining, it is almost ridiculous that there is next to nothing in it.

He realizes his job description does not require him to be an in-house caretaker, but it is the least he can do. He doesn't know the circumstances behind her situation, has no idea what she is going through or why, but if his deduction is correct and he is protecting her from _that_, he knows that simply watching her under the guise of a genjustsu is not going to be enough anymore.

When she trudges into the room, her hair is unkempt and damp and smells like lavender and peaches, a strange mix but one he does not find unpleasant. But this is the only noticeable thing about her that is gentle. She is of course feminine, delicate, fragile, but with the thin shadows under her eyes, the hardness of her neglected muscles, even the way she is dressed in tattered sleeping shorts and a baggy sweater – almost everything about her is rough around the edges.

She is glaring at him in a similar manner, the narrowing of her brow and the downturn of her mouth slight but obvious. She looks disturbed and he knows why. It was not his intention to frighten her, but he expected such a reaction. Although he is in ANBU, it is clear she does not trust him – maybe she did before, but his earlier intrusion has changed everything. He is no longer just her bodyguard; he is also now her houseguest.

"What is this?" she asks him, and he is displeased by how calmly she says it. This isn't right. Haruno Sakura is a spitfire, but this girl with the civilian clothes and blank disposition doesn't fit the description.

"You should take better care of yourself," his voice muffles through his mask. He doesn't even have to look at the cartons in the trash can or the wooden chopsticks on the counter for her to understand what he means.

"I'm not a very good cook," she admits, "and takeout is easier. And anyway, aren't you supposed to be babysitting me? It's irresponsible to leave me alone just to buy groceries I'm never even going to eat."

Itachi closes a cabinet and watches her over his shoulder. "Shadow clone," he says vaguely, and although she looks to have acknowledged this, she does not look grateful for the favor.

"I'm not hungry," she murmurs, although he knows this cannot be true. He has observed her enough to know that she always eats dinner at 7:30, give or take a few, depending on when the delivery boy knocks on her door with her meal wrapped in a plastic box. With his surprise appearance earlier, she must have forgotten to call in an order, because she also never takes baths, only showers, and only early in the morning. It appears he has thrown her off schedule, but he doubts her appetite has caught up to this change.

He tosses her an apple and she catches it easily; although he rarely sees her train, it is clear that she is still a kunoichi with kunoichi reflexes and – if her deepening frown is any indication – that infamous kunoichi stubbornness.

"I'm not interested—"

"Start with that for now," he interrupts quietly. "I'll be done shortly."

There is a pause as he begins to work, lighting the stove and searching for a knife. His skills in the kitchen are subpar compared to his mother's, but what kind of keeper would he be if he did not take care of this girl? It is his mission, after all.

A whistle of something flies toward him and he catches it soundlessly. She has thrown her apple back at him, at his head to be precise, but he can't bring himself to feel upset. Instead he turns to look at her, at her flushed face and the gleam of anger in her eyes and the way she bares her teeth at him as though she's feral.

"Just stop it," she growls. "_Stop it_. I don't want this. I want takoyaki from down the street, I want my radio back on, I want you out of here and _gone_. Or at least as close to gone as you're supposed to be. Shishou said nothing about you babying me like I'm a child—" She stops herself there, perhaps uncomfortable with her outburst. "Just get out of my house. Get out. No offense, but I don't need you here, ANBU-san. Please just…turn that thing off and leave me alone."

She turns on her heel and storms away with a soft step that doesn't quite match the tense anger in her shoulders. He thinks to himself that he should be ashamed. He has made her upset and uncomfortable in her own home, has touched her things and imposed on his host, has given her more to fear when he is supposed to be protecting her…

And yet he cannot bring himself to care. Because for the first time in many, many days, he has finally seen the true emotional angry dramatic _passionate_ Haruno Sakura before his very eyes. And he feels there is hope for her yet.

* * *

**A/N:** Itachi's supposed to have a weasel mask but come on, Kishi, isn't that a little too obvious? Also my 11 year anniversary with this site is only a week away...yikes that's embarrassing.

Check out my **TWITTER** and **TUMBLR** and **INSTAGRAM**. Links on my profile.


	3. interlude one

**A/N: HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT!  
**

Thanks to my amazing job and talented friends, I've gotten the opportunity to help out on the NARUTO LIVE-ACTION MOVIE! I've been contributing to the project for a while now (mostly the development/story aspect), and I just wanted to share this news with you all, as you're probably reading this story because you love Naruto as much as I do!

I'm so excited and so thankful to use my passion for this anime/manga while at work. Obviously I can't say any details about the project, but hey, if I'm not updating much, at least know that I'm doing some other cool things that I hope you'll love (:

And now onto the good stuff xx

* * *

**transcendence **| by kwizten | _INTERLUDE ONE_

* * *

**THREE YEARS BEFORE.**

**HER.**

_Everyone knows she is a hard worker, but perhaps she should have taken the day off._

_Thanks to her workaholic tendencies and Ino's rules about personal hygiene, Sakura is late to her best friend's birthday dinner. To be fair, while Ino is a stickler for sleek hair and shaved legs, she is hardly the epitome of punctuality, and couldn't care less when everyone shows up as long as they eventually do. Sakura, on the other hand, finds it particularly embarrassing that even Shikamaru has beaten her to the party._

_They may as well be in the daimyo's banquet hall, the never-ending length of this dinner table giving her some sort of vertigo. With a quick hello to their giant group of close friends and casual acquaintances – Ino is a social butterfly, after all – she slides into the dark metal seat beside the lazy Nara boy, grumbling to herself because she has drawn the short end of the stick and is all the way at the end of the table, awkwardly just far enough that she can't possibly join any conversation._

_And she got all dressed up and everything, too._

_She pulls aside a waitress and orders a whiskey neat, never one for feminine drinks but definitely one for nursing a glass, just to do something with her hands. Everyone seems to have ordered their main course already, and she certainly hasn't eaten since her partial "lunch break" at the hospital, but the menus have been cleared and the food here's too expensive anyway. Perhaps her sweet tooth will just wait for dessert._

_"Nice hair," Shikamaru drawls, but she pouts because he isn't even looking at her, so how should he know?_

_"Shut up." She puts a hand on her birds nest of a hairstyle and wishes she had made enough time to wash out the hospital curls, but it was either clean hair or a layer of foundation, and the bags under her eyes inspired her to choose the latter._

_"I wasn't being sarcastic," he says with a sigh and plays with his food. "Geez, girls can never take a compliment."_

_Admittedly, she sighs a bit more dramatically than necessary, half out of irritation and the other half with a tired smile. "Sorry, I'm just a bit flustered. I hate being fashionable and I hate being late, so naturally I got stuck doing both."_

_"Well, all's well that end's well," he shrugs. "Everyone else on this end is a friend of Ino's from god-knows-where, so you're saving me the trouble of socializing with strangers."_

_He doesn't even bother to lower his voice, so she swats him teasingly on the shoulder in case one of the so-called strangers happens to overhear, though everyone seems to be preoccupied already. "Let me guess..." she raises an eyebrow, "it's a bit too troublesome to make friends?"_

_"I'm just saying, I could have worse conversation partners."_

_"Gee, thanks," she deadpans._

_She finds it amusing that Shikamaru feels the need to sit up straighter at her harmless response. She's known him long enough to see the way he gets easily uncomfortable by sensitive women __– __the Nara matriarch and Ino, specifically __–__ and she wonders if maybe that defensive reaction comes naturally to him, these days. She has to hold in a giggle at the way his brow scrunches and he groans with annoyance._

_"Sheesh," he grumbles, "you girls always have to make things difficult."_

_"More like, you boys have a lot to learn about how to talk to girls."_

_She says it teasingly with a smooth quirk of her brow, but her confident bravado doesn't last long - out of nowhere her stomach growls loudly and the grin on her face becomes embarrassingly sheepish. Even the chuunin across the table turns to look at her questionably, and she has to shoot him a disgruntled look until he turns away. Meanwhile Shikamaru smirks down at her with a sideways glance, and she pretends not to be flustered at her unladylike moment of weakness._

_"Worked through your lunch break again, did you?" he teases, and she wonders when exactly he found out about her bad work habits anyway._

_"There aren't enough hours in the day to get everything done," she huffs. "That's not my fault."_

_The high-and-mighty look on his face never quite disappears, but he has the decency to push his yakiniku a few inches in her direction. "Here."_

_She can't deny that it smells heavenly, but she also doesn't appreciate the way his eyes are laughing at her. Even so, her chopsticks are sitting right in front of her, and everyone else is too busy to notice if she rudely swipes something from a dish that doesn't belong to her..._

_"Shikamaru!" she scolds him, looking away so he can't see her salivate. "I have no intention of mooching off you when I'm perfectly capable of ordering something myself. You realize I technically have two jobs."_

_He sighs heavily and almost looks to be rolling his eyes, no doubt exasperated at her fussy behavior. Even so, she takes a quick glance over her shoulder and sees the amusement dancing in his gaze. "Look, I don't have much of an appetite anyway, and Chouji will kill me if I leave any leftovers. It's already sitting in front of you. Quit being so troublesome and just help yourself."_

_She can't help but smile at the laid-back way he offers it __–__ only Shikamaru could order someone around and still sound half-asleep._

_Without a word, she slowly twists her body back around and refuses to meet his eyes. She pouts as she picks up her chopsticks, leaning over a bit in an attempt to act natural when really she wants to dig into the dish like an animal. With as much grace as she can bring herself to muster, she indulges and pretends like Shikamaru isn't watching her poor excuse of a show. In a second, the beef sits on her tongue and melts in her mouth like cream, and somewhere between her bliss and improper table manners, she grudgingly admits that expensive food is expensive for a reason._

_"Mmm, Shika-kun," she closes her eyes and hums delightfully, completely missing the sudden flush of his cheeks, "you sure know the way to win a girl's heart."_

* * *

**HIM.**

_To Shikamaru, time has always seemed to travel at a snail's pace – slow, steady, monotonous, easy. So he finds it odd that, while chatting to Sakura about clouds and hospitals and dusty books and janken strategies and lord knows what else, the past few hours have gone by without him even noticing._

_A few party guests are still lingering here and there, and it's late enough that the restaurant has opened up the dance floor. Tonight Shikamaru has learned that Sakura hates dancing in public just as much as he does, so instead they hold their place at the end of the dinner table while Ino twirls around with strangers wishing her a happy birthday. Meanwhile, he's a few drinks deep, and Sakura's even more so, though she is holding her liquor rather well considering her small size and his lazy company._

_She's since adopted a laid-back position to go hand-in-hand with his, sitting sideways to face him properly while an elbow rests at the top of her chair. Her fingers weave through her rosy hair to hold her head at an angle, and as he observes this, she laughs at something he's said, which astounds him because he's never thought himself to be very funny. But there's something about the way she does it, the way her laugh sounds rough and charming all at once, and he hopes she continues to find him amusing so he can continue to hear her smile._

_He smirks at her in response because he can't think of the words to say. Somewhere in the fogginess of his mind, he realizes he is feeling nervous __–__ something he has never felt in regards to Haruno Sakura before. Then again, he's known her for a long time. Perhaps she's been so present in his life that he completely missed seeing her grow up. But there she is, right in front of his eyes, the girl who looks so much like a woman in that black dress and mussed up hair, despite the boyishness of her figure and the flexing of her fist. She is the same Sakura he has always known, with the same passions and the same temper and the same wit, but there is a charm in her crossed legs and sultry smile that is very new._

_Or maybe that charm has always been there, and he's just been too lazy to notice._

_"Hey...can you keep a secret?"_

_She leans closer to him as she says it, and he can't tell if she's drunk or sleepy or both, but her flirtatious Cheshire smile and that telltale spark in her eyes is enough to distract him. "Hmm?"_

_She pauses for an extra second and takes her time to answer. "Well...this is probably the whiskey talking, and the mood lighting in this place isn't exactly helping, but..." He watches her trail off, watches her throat as she swallows hesitantly, watches her apple-colored eyes darting back and forth between his. He figures she must have seen something encouraging, because it isn't long before she continues her thought. "You know, Shikamaru," she says teasingly, "you're looking rather handsome tonight."_

_The mood lighting may have cast a spell, but it certainly doesn't hide his blush._

_"I mean, you clean up nice. Who would've thought..." She laughs, and it warms something inside him he can't place. "You're quite the catch, aren't you?"_

_He can hardly believe this is the Haruno Sakura from his childhood, the Haruno Sakura who pined after Sasuke and trained with the Hokage and saves people's lives. This is the Haruno Sakura who works ridiculous hours and skips lunch and shows up late to a party without brushing her hair. This is the Haruno Sakura he has always known, but this is also the Haruno Sakura he has only just met. He isn't sure what's coming over him, where this wave of attraction is coming from exactly, but as he shifts his chair a little closer to hers and smiles down at her flushed cheeks, he finds he's actually excited to find out._

_"Yeah, well, look who's talking."_

* * *

**A/N:** Don't freak out. This isn't a Sakura/Shikamaru story, but the Shika-stuff is indeed important! You'll be finding out bits and pieces of Sakura's situation via interlude chapters, so you'll have to just bear with me (; Please don't be angsty over the lack of Itachi, because ANBU-san will be back next time in all his scrumptious glory, I promise!

Please review! This story gets incredible traffic and so many lovely subscribers, but alas, no one ever reviews! Womp womp womp angst angst angst.

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